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I've been dyeing, sewing, painting, drawing, beading and felting in Denver, Colorado for quite some time. I especially love starting with a blank piece of paper or fabric and coming up with my own designs from scratch.

I've been making art dolls for several decades and out of this evolved my cloth pins and ornaments. Each one is like a miniature version of my larger art dolls.
My pins and ornaments are first sewn of good quality white cotton fabric and then stuffed with polyfill. Then they're hand dyed, hand painted and finally beaded. A pin back is sewn securely on the back of the pins. Because of the nature of the hand dyeing, no two are ever exactly alike.
My spouse loves to spin and weave, and I dye warps for his beautiful handwoven scarves.
I've been painting my entire life and especially love to paint in a celtic or medieval style, but pure fantasy is also great fun.
The well fleshed orange kitty that my shop is named after is Donovan who has his own web site.

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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Handweavers Guild of Boulder annual sale is allowing tools to be sold this year, provided they are made by the member selling them. So, I made some new lucets for the sale.

I've blogged about lucets before, when I was making cord for my husband's poet shirt. The lucet is a very old tool that is used for making cord. It is related to the knitting nancies that we made as kids out of an old wooden spool and 4 or more nails. The lucet has just two prongs which the string or yarn is wound around and looped over to create a cord. Depending on how the cord is looped, a square cord or a flat cord can be made.

I usually use it to make square cord out of cotton yarn, which is perfect for shoe strings, cord to lace up poet shirts or for drawstrings on pouches. It also makes a great cord for corsets that is much less likely to slip than ribbon or satin cord.

Years ago I made some lucets for largess and for my own use. I
researched them a bit and then drew up my own pattern that fit
comfortably in my own hand and was able to be be turned easily. I left
off the handle that is often on lucets because I just couldn't see a use
for it and it looked like it would only get in the way.

I ended up making six lucets total, including the one pictured at top. Three out of cherry and three out of walnut. In the future I'll be making some out of birds eye maple too, once the beautiful piece of maple I acquired gets resawn and planed into the correct thickness. I use only hard woods that can be polished very smooth.

I've included cotton velvet pouches with the lucets I'm selling. I bought two large bolts of gorgeous cotton velvet years ago to make period dresses that will now never get made so it seemed like a good way to use up the velvet. The drawstrings are all made using a lucet. I always keep my lucet in its pouch when not in use, along with the yarn for the current project.

I also drew up some instructions to be included with the lucets being sold. These are very basic instructions for making a square cord, which is the easiest cord to make on a lucet. I'll be elaborating on these instructions soon when I post a tutorial and will follow with more tutorials on how to make flat cord as well.